A conservative fundamentalist Christian's take on the latest happenings in the world, our government, the church, and the culture.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Want to Solve the Abortion "Problem"? Clean Up the Culture!

This is in answer to any of you who have commented in the past, or wanted to comment, on why I am adamant in my opposition to abortion, and what I would do instead of allowing abortions to continue. That's not the question. The question is how do we finally make abortion unnecessary.

Before I begin: how can we debate anything if we don't even agree on thefundamentals? If any person has so little respect for human life that he or she would sacrifice any human life under any circumstances to the convenience of another person (except as punishment for a crime, of which the person to be so sacrificed shall have been duly convicted), then I say to that person: Debate is impossible. All we're arguing about is which of us will earn the most votes in the next election, or win the next Senate confirmation fight.

Do any of you remember this event that occurred this summer, wherein Operation Rescue bought the building out from under an abortion clinic, evicted the abortionist, moved in, and started to clean the place up to use it for their headquarters? Do you remember the really sick-making findings? Blood all over the carpet, blood that lit up the walls when you shined a Woods lamp on them, and a big garbage disposer in a janitor's closet that reeked from all the tissue-trap remains that the clinic staff had ground up in that thing? Even the makers of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre couldn't have done better, by their lights, than this.

And in case any of you think that these conditions are not typical of abortion clinics nationwide, let me remind you that Norma McCorvey, of Roe fame, confirmed that these conditions and practices absolutely were and are typical. Don't just take my word on that; read the original article for yourselves.

Now then: Some people seem to think that abortion is simply a wretched and desperate solution to a very pressing, even emergent, problem that a number of young women find themselves getting into. Let us lay aside, for the moment, the brazen heartlessness of abortion providers--and of women who know what sex can lead to, but do it anyway, and have their abortionist on-call. Let us, then, take these complainers at their word. So what solution do they offer for the spectacle of pregnancy out of wedlock, kids raising kids, and the like? More "sex education." In other words, more of the same-old, same-old, that leads so many young women down that garden trail.

Now I propose that we teach solid moral values. I also propose that we clean things up in this culture. The trouble is that when you're wallowing in mud, you forget what "clean" is. "Clean" is that until Hollywood repents of their sexed up (and anti-American) ways, we don't go to the movies anymore. "Clean" might be junking the TV and subscribing to ISP's that do DNS-level filtration of all domains. Above all, "clean" means teaching our young women to dress modestly and teaching our young men to train in their roving eyes.

Some of you will ask what this has to do with abortion. I'll tell you what. If women had enough respect for themselves to reserve sexual intercourse for marriage only, we wouldn't be fighting this verbal war in which we can't even agree on the simple meanings of words.

But how can we expect women to have such respect for themselves when we--and I speak directly to my fellow men--don't have such respect for them? When we define lack-of-modesty down to the point at which modern outerwear provides less coverage than did the underwear commonly worn just one generation ago? (For the record: the big crash of standards came with the departure of women's fashion away from the high standards of the Regency, Victorian, and Edwardian periods.) When we put actors and actresses into suggestive situations and call that a fit public spectacle? When we build private clubs and sell one another fifty- or hundred-dollar keys (they cost $25 US ca. 1965) to walk into places where women run around in their underwear and serve us intoxicating liquor? When we encourage our wives and daughters to swim in public in what might as well be their underwear, the only difference being that it's waterproof? When we continue to patronize certain wiseguys who brazenly bray out rapacious rhymes?

In answer, the pro-abortion crowd points to the "ostracism" of young women (and when was the last time any of you saw that happen?). They go on to say, "Well, we did it ourselves once, except that we didn't get pregnant, and they did. Maybe their condoms failed. Maybe their parents taught them that prophylactics were wrong. And nobody wants to solve the problem!" Et cetera ad nauseam

And neither do they want to "solve the problem," not really, because of all the money that the abortion providers would lose. What sort of solution is it, anyway, to go on doing these things? As usual, such verbiage that passes for analysis, misses the point.

The point is not that "we have ostracized anyone"--if we have. The real point is that we place a double bind on women when we suggest that they ought to have more respect for themselves, and then don't show such respect on our part. How long do any of you think that women would run around in outerwear that is more like underwear, if men would consistently avert their eyes from such sights? What if they showed a movie and nobody went?

But I don't see that kind of solution from the pro-abortion movement. No, sir (or ma'am, as the case may be). They want to be able to divorce sex from all its consequences. And some of them want a little action themselves. The educational establishment is full of Humbert Humberts and Sapphos--and fashion designers who act as though they took what passes for their inspiration from Vladimir Nabokov. If we could stop that cycle, then abortion wouldn't be such a lucrative practice.

Of course, I don't expect more than a tiny portion of those who complain about the "burden" of "unwanted pregnancy" to approve my solution. Well do I remember Faye Wattleton, one of the long line of past presidents of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She once said, and this was another lie, that "America [was] the most prudish country on earth." (Let no one bother denying that she ever said that; she said it to Morley Safer, or maybe it was Mike Wallace, on Fifty-nine-and-a-half Minutes Too Late.) We could use some of the prudery that Faye Wattleton claimed to see in our society.

In closing, many of my opponents will quote the Pericopa Adultura, the passage (of dubious authorship, but that's another story for another forum) purporting to describe an incident in which Jesus refused to judge a woman caught in flagrante delicto in adultery. "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her," this passage quotes Him as saying. But those who cite this passage--and again, I admit nothing as to its authenticity--fail to mention what "else" this passage quotes Jesus as saying to the woman: "Go and sin no more." I don't hear any of my opponents saying one word that anyone might legitimately construe as an admonition to "go and sin no more." Instead, I hear, "I'll make it to be of no consequence."

Jesus never once said that sin would have no consequence. He has promised to cancel the sin debt--but never to erase the consequences of sin for the rest of creation. Not, that is, until He literally burns everything up and makes everything new. [Revelation chh. 21-22]

And by the way: many of the same people who presume to quote Jesus in this context, are the very ones yelling about "separation of church and state" and suing in court to promulgate separation of faith and state. If they quote Jesus now, then they're just being hypocritical.

So: you want to solve the abortion problem? Let's name it then: obsession with, and compulsion in the name of, sex. Fight that, and a lot of those other problems will go away. But if you won't fight it, then don't come crying to me about a lack of compassion and decency. Anyone who sees anything decent about snuffing out another life just because that life is inconvenient, is guilty of hijacking the language, and I repeat: with such a person, debate is impossible.